Attachment Flashcards
Attachment
a strong emotional bond shared by an infant and a primary care giver
Interactional synchrony
- the infant imitates their caregivers actions
Reciprocity
- infants and caregivers interacting with a conversation-like rhythm and taking turns
- an important precursor to later communication
Care-giver interactions
- reciprocity
- interactional synchrony
- caregiverese
Interactional synchrony - Meltzoff and Moore
- an adult model displayed 1/3 facial expressions or hand movements where fingers moved in a sequence
- the infants reaction was then filmed
- an association between the infant behaviour and the adult model was found
- in a later study, they found infants as young as 3 days old showed interactional synchrony
- suggests infant-caregiver actions are innate
AO3 Meltzoff and Moore - Problems with testing infant behaviour
- infants’ mouths are constantly in motion and the expressions they were testing for occur frequently either way (tongue out, yawning, smiling)
- difficult to distinguish between general activity and intentional imitation behaviours
- they overcame this however by recording the infants and asking an observer with no criteria to judge the infant’s behaviour (increased the internal validity)
AO3 Meltzoff and Moore - Intentionality supported
- a study was done observing infants’ responses to inanimate objects
- found that infants between 5-12 weeks showed little response to objects
- supports the idea that they are a specific social response from babies to caregivers
AO3 Caregiver-infant reactions - Real-life application
- understanding of infant-caregiver reactions can help us develop parent-child therapies/solutions to improve their bonds
- however, these therapies encourage women to stay at home which can have negative effects on both the economy and stereotypes surrounding women
- although it has practical value, it is socially sensitive
AO3 Meltzoff and Moore - Failure to recreate findings
- a hallmark of strong psychological research is that its findings can be replicated, but this wasn’t the case w/ M&M
- Koepke et Al tried and failed to replicate the findings, but M&M countered that this was because their study was less carefully controlled
Schaffer’s stages of attachment
- Asocial
- Indiscriminate
- Specific
- Multiple
Asocial stage
- 0-6 weeks
- infants respond similarly to people and objects, but perhaps more to people
Specific stage
- 7+ months
- the infant begins to prefer one particular caregiver (typically the mother)
- begins to experience stranger and separation anxiety
Indiscriminate stage
- 6 weeks - 6 months
- infant can differentiate between objects and people but can be comforted by anyone
Multiple stage
- 10/11+ months
- the infant has now formed multiple attachments and seeks comfort from multiple people, as well as experiencing separation anxiety for multiple people
AO3 Schaffer & Emerson - Inflexible
- an issue with ‘stage theories’ is that there are inflexible, suggesting that everyone has a fixed order for development
- in collectivist societies, multiple attachments are more likely to precede specific attachments
- the theory is limited as it is both deterministic and culture biased
AO3 Schaffer & Emerson - Sample issues
- all from working-class families
- all from Glasgow
- cannot be generalised to other groups of people
- low population validity
Schaffer & Emerson study
- studied 60 babies from working-class families in Glasgow
- visited the babies and mothers in their homes every month, for 18 months (longitudinal study)
- found that attachments were based on who interacted most with babies, rather than who spent the most time with the babies
- mothers also kept diaries about the infants’ behaviour, eg. their separation and stranger anxiety (self-report)
AO3 Schaffer & Emerson - Methodological issues
- self report could have led to demand characteristics
- the mothers may have been insecure about not being able to spend lots of time with their children, and therefore lied in their diaries so they didn’t seem like bad mothers, skewing the results
- longitudinal studies cannot control all variables
AO3 Schaffer & Emerson - Socially sensitive
- S&E found that the strongest attachments were formed between mothers that interacted lots with their babies
- for some mothers that work this isn’t possible, which could be socially sensitive and lead them to feel like bad mothers
- this could also lead to economic implications if the mothers quit their jobs to spend more time interacting w/ their babies
What did Schaffer & Emerson say about the Role of the Father?
- 75% of infants in their study formed a secondary attachment to their father by 18 months
- suggests that the father is important, but not likely to be the first person infants form an attachment with
Imprinting
animals will attach to the first moving thing they see after being born
Sexual imprinting
animals will attach and show sexual behaviours towards the first moving thing they see after being born
Critical period
- the idea that if attachment doesn’t happen after a certain period of time, it will never happen and have serious consequences for the individual
- Bowlby proposed the critical period for humans to be 2.5 years
Harlow’s Rhesus Monkeys
- removed the newborn monkeys from their mothers and brought him to his lab where they were enclosed with 2 mothers: a wire mother that dispensed milk, and a cloth mother that provided comfort
- the monkeys spent almost all their time with the cloth mother, only going to the wire mother when hungry
- when presented with a fear stimulus, the monkeys ran to the cloth mother for comfort
Lorenz’s greylag geese
- took 12 eggs and let half of them hatch in front of him so they would imprint onto him
- to ensure that imprinting had occurred, he put all the geese in a box and when released, the half that imprinted on him ran towards him, whereas the other half ran towards the real mother goose
- supports imprinting theory
AO3 Lorenz - Guiton et Al
- contradicting research
- made chickens imprint on yellow washing up gloves
- as they grew up, they tried to mate with the gloves but eventually learnt to mate with other chickens
- suggests sexual imprinting is not as permanent as Lorenz believed
AO3 Harlow - Ethical issues
- has been criticised for being extremely unethical
- the monkeys showed extreme distress both when originally separated from their birth mother and when separated from their cloth mother
- in adult life, the monkeys showed distress in social situations and some ended up killing their offspring
- failed to protect 🐒’s from harm and permanently psychologically scarred them
AO3 Harlow - Practical value in zoos
- the understanding of the importance of comfort and love for animals has to lead to better treatment of animals in zoos
- animals are now less likely to be forcefully removed from their families, and more likely to be housed in zoos together
AO3 Lorenz - Issues with generalisablity
- generalising findings from geese to humans should be approached with caution
- mammalian attachments are very different to bird attachments so his findings have low ecological validity
- at least Harlow used monkeys which are recognised as sharing brain similarities with humans
Learning theory of attachment
- learning theory sees children being born with blank slates
- the baby has to learn to form an attachment with the mother through operant and classical conditioning
- cupboard love (we form attachments to the person providing us with food)
Classical conditioning in attachment
- baby associates the mother (neutral stimulus) with the pleasure of being fed (unconditioned response)
- the mother then becomes the conditioned stimulus and starts causing pleasure for the child even when she isn’t feeding it
- thus begins the attachment
Operant conditioning in attachment
- when the child cries, the mother comforts them with food or affection
- the more this happens, the action is reinforced and the child associates the mother with those rewards
- food is the primary reinforcer and the mother is the secondary reinforcer
AO3 Learning theory - Harlow
- Harlow’s study found that comfort was more important than food
- disputes the learning theory that attachment is based solely on food
AO3 Learning theory - Lorenz
- learning theory suggests that attachment is learnt, whereas Lorenz’s geese study found that attachment and imprinting was innate
- learning theory is limited due to contradicting research
AO3 Learning theory - Caregiver-infant interactions
- learning theory suggests that attachment is learnt, whereas Meltzoff and Moore’s research into caregiver-infant reactions (CGIR) suggests that is innate
- found babies as young as 3 days older displaying CGIR
- 3 days of life isn’t long enough to classically condition the mother as a conditioned stimulus
- learning theory is limited due to contradicting research